A Justice Department investigation found that 142 inmates have died in the Harris County Jail as a result of poor medical care, the AP reports.

With help from the ACLU, two Corpus Christi high school students ended school voting on whether graduation ceremonies should include prayer, the Caller-Times reports.

As many as 900 juvenile offenders in Harris County have been dumped into the adult justice system, some as young as 14 and many of them people of color, the Houston Chronicle reports.

Tax cuts have pushed Texas to the bottom of the barrel in terms of social spending, writes John Young of the Waco Tribune-Herald.

Houston-based Halliburton has made tons of cash from war profiteering in Iraq while its crimes go unnoticed and unchecked, writes CorpWatch's Pratap Chatterjee.

DALLAS – As the five defendants of the Holy Land Foundation case were being sentenced Wednesday, many members of the local Muslim community came together to rally outside the Earle Cabell Federal building with a banner that read “feeding children is not a crime,” and black shirts with the words “Free the Holy Land Five.”

Three of the five men received the maximum sentence possible. Ghassan Elashi, 55, received 65 years on 35 counts; Shukri Abu Baker, 50, received 65 years on 34 counts; Mohammad El-Mezain, 55, was given 15 years on a single count. The other two, Mufid Abdulqader, 49, and Abdulrahman Odeh, 49, received 20 years and 15 years respectively each on three counts.